India

2012

For the safety of journalists and other people on the
streets protesting injustice, Indian police must begin in earnest to address
how they respond to demonstrations. One journalist died covering protests that have
been taking place across the country following the gang rape of a 23-year old
female medical student on a Delhi bus on December 16. The government's response
to these protests, in which more than 100 people have been injured, has raised
eyebrows across the world.

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New York, December
24, 2012--Indian authorities must immediately investigate the death of a
cameraman who was fatally shot by police on Sunday while covering protests
against the sexual assault of women. The Associated Press identified the
journalist as Dwijamani Singh, a reporter for the news division of the
satellite-distributed Prime News channel that covers northeast India. Other reports
have provided different spellings of Singh's name.

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Dear Prime Minister Singh: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by Indian authorities' continued abuse of a colonial-era sedition law to stifle freedom of expression. CPJ calls on your government to begin taking action toward repealing the law, section 124A in the Indian penal code, which Indian lawmakers have deemed punitive and outdated.

Syrian violence contributed to a sharp rise in
the number of journalists killed for their work in 2012, as did a series of
murders in Somalia. The dead include a record proportion of journalists who
worked online. A CPJ special report

Almost half of the 67 journalists killed worldwide in 2012 were
targeted and murdered for their work, research
by the Committee to Protect Journalists shows. The vast majority covered
politics. Many also reported on war, human rights, and crime. In almost half of
these cases, political groups are the suspected source of fire. There has been
no justice in a single one of these deaths.

The tortured
and decapitated body of 39-year-old María
Elizabeth Macías Castro was found on a Saturday evening in September
2011. It had been dumped by the side of a road in Nuevo Laredo, a Mexican
border town ravaged by the war on drugs. Macías, a freelance journalist, wrote
about organized crime on social media under the pseudonym "The Girl from Laredo." Her murder, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, was the first in which a journalist was killed in direct
relation for reporting published on social media. It remains unsolved.

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New York, November 9, 2012--An Indian television journalist
who documented a large-scale attack on young women and reported the episode to
police in Karnataka state has been charged with participating in the assault,
according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists considers the
arrest to be retaliatory and calls on authorities to drop the criminal charges and
release the reporter immediately.

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After intense public pressure, the Maharashtra state
government last week dropped the charge of sedition against Indian cartoonist
Aseem Trivedi. However, Trivedi still faces other charges as his case resumes
tomorrow at the Bombay High court.

The 25-year old cartoonist, who was arrested on September 8, could have been sentenced to life imprisonment if convicted of sedition. He still faces up to three years in prison for other charges including violation of the Prevention of Insult to National Honour Act and Information Technology Act, his lawyer Vijay Hiremath told CPJ by e-mail.

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A couple dozen activists gathered this past week in New York
City's Union Square to protest the imprisonment of freelance journalist Lingaram Kodopi and his
aunt Soni Sori, who were
arrested one year ago in India.

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The government of Indian Kashmir has a long record of
failing to respond to physical attacks on the press. This week, the possibility
that websites like YouTube and Facebook were blocked indicated that online
freedoms, too, are under threat.

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New York, September 28, 2012--Indian authorities must determine
the motive in a bomb attack that killed a freelance journalist in her home on
Wednesday and bring the perpetrators to justice, the Committee to Protect
Journalists said today.

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This week, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh marked his
80th birthday. He spent the day, Wednesday, in the company of family
and at public events, according to news
reports. "There are no celebrations.
He prefers to be with his family in the morning--then work as usual," Singh's
spokesman told the media.

Although it is the world's largest democracy, India
has retained its colonial-era sedition law. But with a national debate ensuing after
the arrest of 25-year-old political cartoonist Aseem Trivedi on the antiquated
sedition charge and others, members of the Indian government have been forced
to do some soul-searching.

New York, September 17, 2012--The
Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Wednesday's attack on two media
workers outside the offices of local daily The
Arunachal Times in India and calls on police in Arunachal Pradesh state to increase
security for the paper, which has been attacked three other times since March.

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CPJ has been monitoring the investigation into the shooting
attack on Arunachal Times journalist
Tongam Rina outside her office in Itanagar, capital of Arunachal Pradesh state,
which left her hospitalized in critical condition this July.
Her recovery is progressing, slowly but surely. The police inquiry, however, is
not.

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New York, September 10, 2012--Indian authorities should immediately
drop all of the charges against cartoonist Aseem Trivedi and release him from
detention, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Police in Maharashtra state arrested Trivedi, a 25-year-old freelancer from India's central Uttar Pradesh state, on Saturday, according to news reports. The cartoonist faces charges of sedition, violating Internet security laws, and insulting national honor for publishing cartoons mocking national symbols and criticizing corruptionon his website, Cartoons Against Corruption, news reports said.

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Early this month, newspaper offices in Indian-controlled
Kashmir received a note warning journalists to be more supportive of the
Kashmir independence movement, according to the leading national daily, The Times of India, citing
a news agency in the state's summer capital, Srinagar. No militants took
responsibility this time, but in mid-March insurgent groups issued a joint message
that urged journalists to "highlight the pain and suffering of Kashmiris
because of oppressive state policies."

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Indian
Internet advocates and journalists are in an uproar this week over the news
that the government has blocked access to around 300 websites, pages, and
social media accounts in an effort to quell communal violence in the turbulent
northeast. The rationale is that inflammatory online content has fanned
tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in states including Assam, Karnataka,
Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra, contributing to a mass exodus from the region and
violence in other cities. The offending content included fabricated images of
violence against Muslims, apparently circulated to incite retaliatory attacks,
according to news reports.

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New York, August 14, 2012--At least three Indian journalists
were attacked over the weekend during protests by Muslim groups calling for news
coverage of the deaths of Muslims in the ongoing ethnic tension in the state of
Assam, according to news reports.

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New York, August 14, 2012--Indian authorities should
immediately investigate a grenade attack that targeted a prominent local
journalist on Saturday, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. No one
was injured in the attack, which came in the wake of death threats made by
local insurgents against editors, according to news reports.

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New York, July 16, 2012--Authorities must immediately
investigate Sunday's attack on Tongam Rina, a journalist for a local Indian
daily, and ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice, the Committee to
Protect Journalists said today. Rina was in critical condition today in a local
hospital, according to news reports.

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Last week, Tarun Sehrawat, a 22-year-old Indian photographer
for Tehelkamagazine, died from
cerebral malaria and its complications, according to several of his colleagues
and media
accounts. He had returned, ill, from a shooting assignment with Tehelka's reporter Tusha Mittal in May.
The team had been covering the ongoing Maoist revolt in Chhattisgarh in central
India and reported it in "Inside
Abujmarh The Mythic Citadel." Both Sehrawat and Mittal became very
ill, but Sehrawat succumbed. Mittal, we understand, is still recovering.

Dear Secretary Clinton: We are writing in advance of the third India-U.S. Strategic Dialogue coming up on June 13, which you will co-chair in Washington, D.C., with Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna. India is host to a vital and thriving news media, but CPJ has documented several violations against Indian journalists that are undermining the country's tradition of a free press.

The
New Delhi-based Tehelka magazine
published an open
letter by imprisoned freelance journalist Lingaram
Kodopi on Monday. Kodopi, one of the two journalists CPJ documented in prison in India on
December 1, 2011, has been held without charge since September 2011 as a
suspected associate of insurgent Maoists in Chhattisgarh. His supporters
believe he faces harassment for documenting police violence in the region.

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New York, May 25, 2012--Local authorities in India must drop the
criminal charges filed against video journalist Mukesh Rajak, an apparent
attempt to prevent him from reporting on local government expenditures, the
Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

The high court in the western state
of Gujarat defended the media, rebuking a prosecutor for demanding state
regulation of newspaper content. The prosecution sought restrictions after the
Ahmedabad police commissioner filed sedition charges against a Times of India editor and reporter, and
a Gujarat Samachar photographer.

CPJ's María Salazar-Ferro names the 12 countries where journalists are murdered regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes. Where are leaders failing to uphold the law? Where are conditions getting better? And where is free expression in danger? (4:46)

Brazil, Pakistan, and India--three nations with high
numbers of unsolved journalist murders--failed an important
test last month in fighting the scourge of impunity. Delegates from the three
countries took the lead in raising objections to a U.N. plan that would
strengthen international efforts to combat deadly anti-press violence.

New Delhi-based Tehelka
weekly news magazine has published a scathing
indictment of the police investigation into the 2011 killing of Mumbai
crime reporter Jyotirmoy
Dey--and of the Indian media's coverage of it. Beneath the allegations
and the rumors, we still don't know exactly why he was killed, while the
self-confessed mastermind is a fugitive from justice. Meanwhile, a second
journalist has been indicted for the crime on apparently flimsy evidence.

To many in the Indian media community, the arrest of independent
journalist Syed Mohammad Kazmi by the Delhi police's Special Cell on March 6
for his alleged involvement in a bombing brings back troublesome memories.

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New York, March 6, 2012--A large crowd attacked a group of about
100 Indian journalists covering local election results in the northern state of
Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday and damaged their equipment, according to news
reports. The journalists were forced to lock themselves in a school for several
hours to protect themselves from the violence, news reports said.

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New York, March 6, 2012--The
Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder of Indian journalist
Rajesh Mishra in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. Mishra
is the second journalist killed in Madhya Pradesh in a month.

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New York, March 2, 2012--Ten Indian journalists were reported
injured today after being attacked by a group of lawyers outside a court in the
city of Bangalore, according to news reports. The Committee to Protect
Journalists condemns the attack and calls on authorities to conduct an
immediate investigation.

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New York, February 21, 2012--The Committee to Protect
Journalists is outraged by the murder of a senior journalist in India and calls
on authorities to conduct an immediate and thorough investigation into his
death.

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Legislation for Internet security can quickly turn into a weapon against the free press. Cybercrime laws are intended to extend existing penal codes to the online world, but they can easily be broadened to criminalize standard journalistic practices. By Danny O'Brien

Although the motives remained unconfirmed in late year, the murders of Chhattisgarh's Umesh Rajput and Mumbai crime reporter Jyotirmoy Dey reminded colleagues of the risk of violence. India remained on CPJ's Impunity Index, a ranking of countries in which journalists are murdered regularly and authorities fail to solve the crimes. Violent clashes between insurgents and government forces in states such as Kashmir challenged reporters' ability to work. In a mid-year report, The Hoot, a media issues website, recorded nine journalist assaults between January and May, including four in Orissa, where industrialization and Maoists had each displaced local residents. Authorities retaliated against critical reporting with antistate charges: Two journalists were jailed for allegedly supporting rebels after they criticized the impact of anti-Maoist campaigns on civilians. Journalists who exposed police ineptitude and corruption faced jail time. Politicians and businessmen muzzled reporters with legal action, including defamation, which authorities failed to decriminalize. Internet penetration was relatively low but growing, prompting the government to pass regulations that could suppress online dissent.

Just how free should the Internet be in India? And whose job
is it to police the Web?

Two recent court cases turn on these questions and, more
specifically, whether Internet companies have a responsibility to filter
content. In a country where Internet usage is growing exponentially, but where
the scars of communal violence, terrorism, and identity politics are fresh, the
answers are likely to have deep
ramifications for years to come.

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In 2005, we deliberately violated the
immigration laws of India. We broke the law by producing a documentary film even though we had entered the country on a tourist visa. We broke the law
because we wanted to show that Scandinavian companies were in violation of many
other laws in India.

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We have been posting a lot about the challenges facing the
Internet in India recently--see Mannika Chopra's "India
struggles to cope with growing Internet penetration." On Tuesday, Angela
Saini, a guest blogger on The Guardian's
Comment Is Free site, posted "Internet
censorship could damage India's democracy," with the subhead "Google and Facebook have been asked to
remove offensive content, but it's not just out of a fear of stoking religious
hatred." Saini makes the point that the official resistance to the increasing
penetration of the Internet goes beyond fears of religious or ethnic violence:

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Because of criticism from Hindu fundamentalists, the showing of a documentary by filmmaker Sanjay Kak at the
Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce in Pune has been indefinitely postponed.
The conservative student organization Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parisha
protested Kak's film, "Jashn-e-Azadi" (How we celebrate freedom), which is
critical of the Indian army's role in Kashmir. In fact, the whole conference,
scheduled to start Friday, has been postponed, according to the investigative
magazine Tehelka
and the BBC.

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The case of a cartoonist charged with treason and offending
India's national sentiments reflects a growing debate over what constitutes
freedom of expression in India. His accusers argue that while it is permissible
to make fun of politicians, you cannot make fun of the state. Not everyone
agrees.

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New York, January 30, 2012--The Committee to Protect
Journalists condemns the attack on an Indian media group's offices by rightwing
Hindu nationalists protesting a local newspaper's coverage of their internal
politics.

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Oprah Winfrey's first visit to India brought delighted
coverage by the Indian media. Her meetings
and tweetings with Bollywood stars, her bright orange sari, and her trips to
slums and to the Taj Mahal were lovingly detailed by newspapers and TV outlets in that
country.